When you went from a mainframe to a PC, what was compelling about that was that it was accessible to more people. You no longer had to go to the printer room to pick up printouts. You no longer had to wait your turn in line for computing resources. You could go to a desk and get calculated answers on a screen in front of you. Then from a desktop to a laptop, it was not just accessible to more people, but accessible in more places. You didn’t have to wait until you went back to your desk to do work. You could lug around a laptop and do your computing right then and there. However, most people wouldn’t do this all day and all the time.

This was the beginning of mobile computing. This is what is so meaningful about mobile computing. Mobile is not just about apps; it’s not just about services. It’s about how every single aspect of a person’s life and every single business in the world is changed by the fact that people have a computer with them all the time. You no longer need to make an appointment with your computer, or lug around a large battery pack with a huge monitory. You have a computer with you everywhere you go.

The first place in the world that is being built up with this assumption is China. For years now, you could go to places in China, pull out your mobile phone and literally order food from the deli down the street, tickets to a movie, or hail a taxi. All the stuff that has been announced in the last couple of years in the United States. For many people in China, the smartphone was their very first computer and what makes this so compelling is that the smartphone goes with you into your actual life.

All the gadgets are getting sucked into the smartphone. For the last 6 – 7 years, gadgets have been disappearing. In the past gadgets were plugged into a PC. They were design and deployed that way. But a PC isn’t mobile. A laptop isn’t mobile. At the end of the day you have to make an appointment, sit down, put it on a desk, turn it on, plug it in, and use it. The MP3 player took a specific function from the PC, listening to music, and made it mobile. A video recorder took recording a video and made it mobile. You can bring it back to the PC, plug it in, and do stuff with it. What’s been compelling about the smartphone is it took all that stuff and made it mobile. So now the smart phone is an all-in-one. There is no point in having things separate and plugging them in. This also means that there is no point in having a desktop or laptop with a bunch of ports to plug stuff in. The rumored no-port MacBook Air makes a whole lot of sense in this new work. It’s all on your phone which is connected to the cloud.

To see how this has affected the industry let’s take a look at Microsoft focusing on Xbox and Sony focusing on the PlayStation. They’ve been relatively successful with their gaming platforms. But is the Xbox and PlayStation computing you can assume someone has with them all the time? When Microsoft did mobile, they extended it off their Desktop. When Sony did mobile gaming they extended the experience off their living room systems. When Sony did mobile music, they did it as an extension off the desktop / laptop, not as a stand alone platform. This turned all of these devices into glorified gadgets. This is why many think that both companies missed the last 10 – 15 years because they missed mobile. Because they saw mobile as a gadget. But mobile is way more important because mobile is part of your life at all times. And gaming is something you make an appointment with and it’s something you sit down and do. Something you can now make an appointment on your Smartphone to do.

What you are seeing is someone Running a MacBook Pro dual booted into Windows 7. They launch Firefox, and visit a URL. This URL then renders an HTML5 / JavaScript version of Windows 7 running in the cloud. From this Windows 7 image they launch Photoshop and then they tab over to a 3D game using the Unreal tournament engine. The second video is basically the same setup, but instead of Photoshop or a game you are seeing Autodesk 3D Studio, the tool used to make the Transformers Movies, running in Firefox using just using HTML5 and JavaScript.

Let that sink in for a moment; you have a company almost no one has ever heard of with advisors from two of the three major browser companies (Mozilla and Google) and IBM sitting at the table with a Hollywood power broker (WME) working with Adobe, Autodesk, and Amazon to make this all happen. Here is their board of advisors:

This means that the most advanced tools a user can use in Hollywood and the gaming industry use to create content are now being built in for just a browser using HTML5 and JavaScript instead of doing it on the desktop.

What does all this mean for us in five years:
In the next 3 – 5 years oToy will either license this technology, or it will get replicated now that all of the 2D / 3D rendering technologies and sound APIs in HTML5 are being supported by browsers. The signs that this is already happening are there Adobe has announced that their products are now only available as an online service, and you can’t buy boxed versions of their apps. Rumors are escaping from Microsoft of a product called Mohoro which is labeled as a “Desktop as a Service” that will be running on Azure. This product is basically Windows running in a browser. This means that the desktop version of Windows that is released in 2015 will be web based, and that the version released in 2016 – 2017 will be released as ONLY web based. This lines up with the timetable that Steve Ballmer announced when he said that by 2017 they would finish their transformation into a devices and services company.

In the short term you will not see a lot change. But within the next 3 – 5 years most of the companies who build desktop applications and tools will have web versions of those tools available. I firmly believe we are about to see a huge shift in this industry that will make things very different very shortly after that.

Note: I know that there drawbacks to this approach in the next couple of years including the network and the size of the servers you need for each of these technologies. This will be solved. You just need a couple doubling in each area and you should be fine. Also, these technologies might work great on internal enterprise networks at first a lot earlier than they will work on residential networks.

Today TechCruch covered a direction Motorola is taking with a project called Ara. The idea here is that a smart phone can be broken up into individual components and you can buy each of them individually. This looks really intriguing from a business perspective as well as the perspective of a technologist such as myself. However cool this idea is, I think it is doomed to failure.

The problem I see with this sort of direction for Motorola is that the commodification of a devices components generally takes place in a very different manner. This commodification happened in the PC industry. However, in the PC it was very different. The main people who were putting together computers from parts were enthusiasts who loved it as a hobby or they were company professionals working to support normal users. In other words, the customers were generally the device users. Even in the case of corporate computers, the IT guy is generally the person who uses the computer the most. Users generally spend their time in the software, and do not worry about the hardware.

In the phone industry, this commodification and specialization has already happened, Apple or Google, or Microsoft don’t make their own displays or their memory, or the battery or radios. They as assemblers and designer are already optimizing the device for their users. Asking a user to assemble the phone from components means that Mom and Dad will have to fiddle with small parts. If not mom and dad, perhaps its the sales guy or the receptionist. Perhaps its a teacher or a chef. It doesn’t matter, each of those people typically doesn’t have the time or the desire to fiddle with a component phone. This is something they never wanted to do with a PC. This lack of need or desire will even be made worse with the size of these components. In the past a video card or a sound card was large enough to be able to work with your hands. These sub components will be the size of AAA batteries and smaller in most cases.

The commodification of a devices components making up the Smart Phone will happen. And it is already happening with the rise of wearable computing. Today when you want to augment your smart phone with an external device or sensor you end up adding device you plug into your shoes, or wear around your wrist. Perhaps you purchase a stylus or a batter pack. Each of these devices are the sub components you are using to customize and personalize your device. The development of a common bus for the Wide Area Devices (WiFi / 802.11x) has only accelerated this. Now that Apple and Google are implemeitng Bluetooth 4.0 LE, this will accelerate down to smaller and lower power devices.

This model as opposed to the proposed model by Motorola seems more likely as it allows for individual low end (from a price perspective) disruption, customization, and gives a diverse number of businesses opportunity to generate value.

Filed under: Computers, Mobile]]>http://tschopp.net/2013/11/22/the-component-smart-phone-and-why-it-will-fail/feed/0modules-283e329ee51bbee11f4765c3501e7d1btedtschoppProject Ara PhoneA Magazine on Web Design Trendshttp://tschopp.net/2013/06/18/a-magazine-on-web-design-trends/
http://tschopp.net/2013/06/18/a-magazine-on-web-design-trends/#commentsTue, 18 Jun 2013 15:21:50 +0000http://tschopp.net/?p=1160]]>I have been using the new flipboard features to put together a collection of articles that tracks the development of web design trends. I am hoping over time that the magazine will be a place that I can go back to to review good ideas. I am also wanting to create a place where others can contribute articles that they find represent important developments.Filed under: Writing]]>http://tschopp.net/2013/06/18/a-magazine-on-web-design-trends/feed/0TypeographytedtschoppTypeographyUser Interfaces in 2017http://tschopp.net/2012/08/26/user-interfaces-in-2017-2/
http://tschopp.net/2012/08/26/user-interfaces-in-2017-2/#commentsMon, 27 Aug 2012 00:38:23 +0000http://tschopp.net/2012/08/26/user-interfaces-in-2017-2/]]>With the release of the Mac Book this year that included a high resolution monitor, I have been thinking a lot about user interfaces and their future.

I am reminded of the thought experiments I went through years ago when the sound cards went from 8 bit to 16bit to being able to reproduce CD quality sound and better. Now days no one thinks about a computer that can’t reproduce sound with sub-CD quality. I remember talking about how this would change games, music, and entertainment as we knew it. But there were things that were not brought up as I look back. I didn’t think about how sound quality of this nature would make just about every sound emitting platform into a software problem. Now granted not every problem in the sound arena has been solved. We still have not reproduced the human voice synthetically without using another human as the input. But this is about it. Our computers can speak to us, but in the end, they sound like computers. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing, and its only a matter of years until this synthetic distinction is a matter of choice.

We already have monitors everywhere that can display a larger number of colors than the human eye can distinguish. Now granted these monitors do not fully replicate all the colors a human can see. But this problem was essentially solved most most colors when computers went to 24 bit color depths.

So what does it mean to me that I can no longer see the pixels that make up the interfaces that I work with? I think the first obvious answer is that my images and text look sharper and cleaner. But what does this mean. From a visual perspective, what’s the difference between looking at the Mona Lisa and looking at a reproduction of the Mona Lisa at a resolution above the what the human eye can distinguish. Granted if you had the real Mona Lisa you could move your head and see the 3D textures of the paint on the wood. But in the end, what would the difference be between of an image of the Mona Lisa scanned at 220 DPI and the real thing. Again, there are differences. But they are diminishing.

So what does this mean? I think that what this means is that I now have a choice when I put together a user interface. The question is. Do I want to display a symbol of something or do I want to display the actual thing. Let me put it another way. Years ago, in High School, I was taking a computer programming class. We had to put together a graphics introduction using Apple ][ graphics. The screen supported 40 pixels by 40 pixels with 4 lines of text. The number of colors available was 15/16 (with two being visually the same). My introduction started with a sword imbedded in the ground, catching fire and swinging around to write my name across the screen. It was rather cool for the day, but in the end, it was just a handful of red, yellow, orange, and grey pixels. It would be laughable today. But how would I do this today? I could do it on an Apple Mac Book Pro with such color correctness and pixel density that a person sitting 2 – 3 feet away from the monitor couldn’t tell it from a “real” sword catching fire and engraving my name into the screen. Well, except for the fact that swords don’t catch fire by themselves nor do they fly. More’s the pity.

So what does this mean? I think that the point I am making is that I believe that there are two approaches heading forward in User Interface design. If I can reproduce with accuracy the color and textures of physical objects and items, will I use those analogues for my interface? Why should I? If I can draw the symbol with such accuracy, why don’t I draw the real thing instead?

The problem is that as with most things a computer is not dealing with nouns such as person’s or places, or things. Its dealing with nouns that fall into the category of ideas. And even if you are dealing with persons or places, is that what you really want? Think about the address book of the future. It has your information in it. First name, Last name. Those are text fields. Phone number. Also a text field. Email address. Text Field. Home Address. . . Text Field? No that’s a symbol pointing to a place on a map. OK, so a map. Well, no the map is also a symbol. How about a satellite image of your house? That also isn’t your house. Now granted the home address is probably something you will always need to keep as its a good agreed upon symbol. However how do you represent it to your users. Lets move on and see what other problems we pull up. How about birthday? Do you represent it as a date? How about a birth certificate? How about representing the birthday as a daily counter to the next event? Again, just like the home address, you probably need the date in the computer as the input to give the user and to share with others, but how do you represent it on the screen. You now have the ability to reproduce something with almost 100% fidelity. This leads me to the final entry in the address book. What symbol do I use to point to myself. Some programs let you use an image, some include your name. On a 40 x 40 pixel screen, there is no option for a picture, but on a 220dpi monitor, you could get a really accurate picture of me.

Now lets say we decide on how we are going to do our address book. I really don’t care what you came up with as your decision points on the above discussion, its the next question that’s really important. You launch your computer 5 – 10 years from now. It boots up in almost nothing flat and you are going to go look for your new co-workers information in the address book. What does that application look like. Is that application a small leather bound black book whose pages wrinkle, age, and turn like the Moleskine notebook? Or is it a collection of pictures, maps, and text? Does your user interface at the top look like a symbolic representation of an item or does it look like the items it contains.

It is my opinion that the world is about to see which of these user interface directions is more successful. Apple is clearly going towards the Notebook, while Microsoft with their Metro interface is heading towards the collection of pictures, maps, and text.

What are your thoughts? Which do you prefer?

Filed under: Web]]>http://tschopp.net/2012/08/26/user-interfaces-in-2017-2/feed/2Color EyetedtschoppColor EyeAndroid is Knott’s Berry Farm as iOS is to Disneylandhttp://tschopp.net/2011/12/24/android-is-knotts-berry-farm-as-ios-is-to-disneyland/
http://tschopp.net/2011/12/24/android-is-knotts-berry-farm-as-ios-is-to-disneyland/#commentsSat, 24 Dec 2011 17:12:25 +0000https://tedtschopp.wordpress.com/?p=1035]]>I recently had an opportunity to return to Knott’s Berry Farm after many years. I had a wonderful time with the family and due to my AAA membership I was able to get in for around $40. I felt it was money well spent. However on my trip around the part I noticed a couple things that caused me to pause and think.

Now lets talk about Knott’s Berry Farm. I am at the train station, I get on the train and take a trip around the park. As I make my trip around the park do I see into any of the other rides? Are the parts of the park I am seeing clean? Does the music transport me to another place? I get off the train and I arrive at the Stage Coach ride. I take that around the park as well. Same questions. Finally I get off the stage coach and I can walk over to the Log Ride, Silver Bullet, or I can walk over into the Americana / 1950’s Jonny Rockets dinner area where they have bumper cars. I am also go into the Western Town and buy trinkets. Did the trip transport me anywhere? Can I see into any of the other rides. Yes, I can build a narrative from one ride to another, but its not as smooth as the Disney narrative. Its also easy to see the trash on the ground, the paint chipped walls. There is little attention paid to jarring anachronistic items out of place.

Now I can hear the arguments. But Knott’s has a lot of cool rides. Yes it does. Many of them are a whole lot more thrilling then the rides at Disneyland. In addition, Ghost Rider can be ridden for free. Also at Knott’s, the park admission is cheaper. But this all is moot in my opinion. Walt Disney made Disneyland to change the paradigm of the theme park. It was no longer just a collection of rides, it was a mediated experience that took you on a trip around the world, into the past, and finally into a idealized future.

In my opinion, Apple’s iOS is a whole lot like Disneyland. Its a mediated experience of what collaboration, communication, and entertainment should be. All the sight lines and transitions have been thought out and everything is carefully controlled and architected. While Android may have more things you can do with the device because it’s less controlled, it ends up with the details being overlooked. Also Android offers some things for free, just like Ghost Rider, however for the full Google experience, you have to pay to get those apps.

Now I know that some people have taken the Android OS and done things like the Nook or the Fire and made an integrated experience. Yes, this is true, but this is how many years after the first iOS devices was launched? There are theme parks that have gone and themed up learning from the lessons that Walt taught them; Florida has some of them.

So what is the point in all this. Well, there are some people who will never like Disneyland and will love Knott’s or Six Flags because of various reasons, and there are some who will love Android more than iOS. This is good and as it should be. For example, if I was tasked with coming up with a new cockpit for the next Mercedes-Benz, I would be looking squarely at Android to provide that functionality. However if I was looking at a device to enable my parents to take a road trip across the United States, I’m looking at an iPhone and a iPad for them.

I am looking forward to the theme park that does to Disneyland what Walt Disney did to previous theme parks. But Knott’s Berry Farm, Six Flags, and the many attempts in Florida are not it even though some of them have had a sparkle of promise. I am also looking forward to someone coming along and doing to Apple what Steve Jobs did to the phone handset makers. But Android is not it. Neither is Windows Phone. Neither is Blackberry. Neither is WebOS, though it has a sparkle of promise. I want to see something that changes the category instead of following the leader.

Filed under: Computers, Family, iPad, Travel, Web]]>http://tschopp.net/2011/12/24/android-is-knotts-berry-farm-as-ios-is-to-disneyland/feed/0Walt DisneytedtschoppWalt DisneyA New Keyboardhttp://tschopp.net/2011/12/16/a-new-keyboard/
http://tschopp.net/2011/12/16/a-new-keyboard/#commentsFri, 16 Dec 2011 14:34:33 +0000https://tedtschopp.wordpress.com/?p=1030]]>I got one of the new ZAAG / Logitech keyboard cases for my iPad last night. I am writing this to you from the new device. I really like this device, its a bit bulky and turns the iPad into a laptop, but I really think that at some point that is what is needed.

The keyboard itself is Bluetooth with a USB charger, and getting it up and running with the iPad works like a charm. I like how Apple has given a bit of thought to keyboards on the iPad, as the escape key acts as the back button and there is a lock and unlock button that will work as well. I like how the cut and paste commands also work.

Overall the keyboard is nice, and I think it will allow me to do more with my iPad over time. Next year I will attempt to get rid of my laptop entirely and even do some coding on this device. I am hoping that the Microsoft Office tools are released and that they are full featured, and not just viewers. If this happens, I think I will be able to replace my computer with a iPad completely.

Tasmania is an island off the coast of Australia which was attached to Australia until about 10,000 years ago with the end of the last glacial period. The island is home to many interesting animals and was home to the Tasmanian Aborigines. These people became isolated from the mainland about 10,000 years ago. It is this isolation and these people I want to focus on.

So what do Aborigines have to do with Collaboration? What does an ice age glacier have to do with people getting together and working together? Why are we looking at these specific people at this specific time? The reason this is all interesting is that 10,000 years ago a divide was created between two people groups. This divide was big enough that people were not able to travel between the island and the mainland. Essentially 10,000 years ago, the people of Tasmania became a lab for asking questions about the value of collaboration.

So what questions can we ask? The first is what happens to the level of culture, technology development, and standard of living after a group of people are no longer able to collaborate? It turns out that this first question is easy to address. Ten thousand years ago, when they split from the mainland, the aboriginal people had a technology level that included fire making, clothing, boomerangs, spears, shields, stone tools, bone tools, compound tools (axe head on a handle), tools to create canoes out of downed trees, clothing, and fishing. When the Europeans finally arrived in 1642, the aborigines on the mainland still had all these technologies; however the aborigines on Tasmania no longer had any of these technologies. They had abandoned them. In the harsh winters they had walked away from clothing. While living on the coast, they had forgotten how to fish.

What lessons can be learned from this? Invention is a function of population you are allowed to collaborate with. Another lesson is that technology is usually invented elsewhere, in other words, technology is invented by taking two ideas from outside and merging them into a third, new idea. Another idea is that technology has to be maintained, and this maintenance is done via collaboration. Some groups will ignore something and consider it taboo, while others will only use a given technology in a limited fashion. It’s only through collaboration and seeing what others are doing that a given piece of technology is fully utilized or even maintained.

So what does this all mean for us today? Well, I will answer that question with another question. Is there anything blocking your ability to collaborate with peers in other companies and parts of the world or other parts of the company? Is that thing that’s blocking you something you are doing to yourself? Are you ignoring other teams because they do things differently? Are you creating taboos for tools and saying something can’t be used to solve a certain problem? Are you in an environment that that doesn’t allow you to talk to others in your industry?

Today the progression of technology is at a rate unheard of 10,000 years ago. Moore’s Law would argue that the level of technology doubles every 18 months. The level of technology on the Australian mainland didn’t double over those 10,000 years. So my question is, are you in IT, and have you collaborated with other people outside your industry, company, workgroup, or comfort zone in the last 18 months? In the last 18 months have you participated in activities that would discourage others who are not in your industry, company, workgroup, or comfort zone from interacting with you? In the last 18 months has your environment kept you from doing these things? If the answer is yes to any of these, I challenge you that now is the time for a change.

Recently I saw the movie Robin Hood staring Russell Crow. The movie itself isn’t great or grand, but it serves as a wonderful jumping off point for a point I’m trying to make. The movie itself is a story of how Robin Hood became an outlaw and what motivates him to do what he does. Upon returning from the crusades Robin finds himself in a community under attack on all sides. The rightful Lord of Nottingham is dead on the battle fields of France, and his father is a weak old blind man. His wife, now single, turns out to have married him right before he left for the crusades. The church is demanding its tithe and King John is demanding taxes to pay for an army to protect the realm from the French. The old, dying father of Lord of Nottingham asks Robin to protect His son’s community.

What is Robin to do? What is he to protect? It turns out that one of his first tasks to protect the community is to make sure the common fields are planted. Eventually at the end of the movie we find Robin living off the land, an outlaw, still protecting the people of Nottingham by defending the commons of that community. The story of Robin Hood centers on the question of the commons. What makes a member a member of a community? Who has the rights to defend the commons? Who has the rights to tax the commons?

What are the commons in your community? What has brought you together? What is worth defending? What is worth fighting for to protect it from corruption? If you have a hard time answering this question, you probably don’t have a community. Once you have identified this, you are on your first steps to defining your community. With most online communities the commons are a kind or class of information that is specific to your discipline, location, or passion. Spend some time thinking about what this is for your community.

Now that you have thought about this, you need to move to the next step, how will you defend this common ground you have with your fellows? How will you see it grow? How will you nurture it. Think about a garden. You tear up the ground, you fertilize the garden, you plant the garden, you pull weeds in the garden. At some point you enjoy the garden. You might even be the envy of your neighbors and friends about how wonderful your garden is. Remember at some point you harvest your garden and you prepare for next year.

Your Community is your fellow gardeners working on the garden. The commons is the garden itself, and the fruit from the garden is value you provide your larger community. Think about how the fruit, the garden, and the gardeners are not all the same. The fruit is very different than the people working in the garden. The work the gardeners do is till the soil, water, weed, etc… but the fruit and the flowers are very different than then digging in the ground, watering, and weeding. The enjoyment from the garden is very different than the flowers and fruit you get from the garden. But all of this is part of the commons for that community.

In growing your community remember these ideas. They may not make you successful, but they will make you more likely to be.

Filed under: Computers, Work Tagged: Computers, Film, linkedin, Work]]>http://tschopp.net/2010/05/19/the-purpose-of-community-protection-of-the-commons/feed/0Russell-Crowe-As-Robin-Hood-Robin-Hood-2010-MovietedtschoppRobin Hood StatueA Model for Collaboration Toolshttp://tschopp.net/2009/08/11/a-model-for-collaboration-tools/
http://tschopp.net/2009/08/11/a-model-for-collaboration-tools/#commentsTue, 11 Aug 2009 22:09:58 +0000http://tedtschopp.wordpress.com/2009/08/11/a-model-for-collaboration-tools/]]>Over the last year I have given a version of this article as a presentation to many different groups explaining the role of collaboration tools in a corporate environment. I hope that this model makes sense to readers.

Introduction

Good collaboration is easy to spot. Words that describe it are “rich, face to face, accurate, and real” These words imply a certain quality of communication with good collaboration. So what gets in the way of good collaboration? Noise and cultural differences are the major medium problems. In addition to these problems we have artifact problems. After a collaboration has taken place the artifacts left are messy and temporary if we are lucky. Many times a group of people will get together to work on a given deliverable and have nothing except memories to take away from the time spent.

It is the role of Information Technology to narrow the mediation gap and leave memorable, permanent, and findable artifacts. Let me repeat it again. It is the role of Information Technology to narrow the mediation gap and leave memorable, permanent, and findable artifacts.

In today’s modern organizations, the role of the employee is to generate knowledge artifacts as the exception handlers in process flows. When the process of knowledge generation breaks down, it breaks down for certain reasons. These reasons are finite. The first is that the tools are not adequate for the job. You have a hammer and a screw. The second option is that the individual performing the work is not adequately trained to use the tool. The only other option is that the tool doesn’t talk to the next tool in the workflow and the artifact generated by one individual must be translated and transferred to the next point of collaboration. This final option was what took place before we had knowledge management systems such as the modern computer.

The effects of this breakdown are also finite. The artifacts are not created and the whole process breaks down. The second option is that the artifacts don’t get stored. Perhaps they are stored, but they can’t be found. Finally, the fourth problem is one where the artifacts are found, but there is no way to audit them against the purposes they were created.

In the end, if you have this going on in your organization you will see people reverting to people and paper processes. You see this with too many meetings and reliance on the “Good ol’ boy “ network. You will see silos develop and a lot of people will complain because they are not a part of the silo or the network, or they don’t have enough time to process the paper and the meetings.

I should note that if you do have tools in your environment and people are complaining about people using them incorrectly or too much, you probably have a problem with inadequate tools. Email is the perfect example of this. It becomes the way to avoid a paper process while still being a paper process.

The Model for Collaboration

I am going to categorize collaboration using three separate properties. The first is Audience. With audience I’m looking at the direction of the communication. I’m not talking about the people listening, I’m talking about the person uttering. The second property I’m going to look at is the actual artifact. What is it exactly that we are leaving for those who were absent? This leads to the final property; time. How long do we need to keep the artifacts of the collaboration?

We are going to say that the audience property has only four separate variables. The first is the conversation. This is a one on one conversation between two people. The second type of audience is the announcement. This type of audience is that it starts with one person and goes to many. The third type of audience is the Brainstorm. This is a group of many people interacting together to generate an artifact. Finally we have the feedback look. This audience is identified as many individuals giving feedback to one individual.

Taking a look at Artifacts, we will divide this into three categories. Written, Verbal, and Visual. Each of these artifacts build on one another into the next artifact. A visual artifact has a verbal component. Each verbal component, has a written component.

The final property to look at is time. I will break up time into 4 separate categories. The first category is Real time. This type of collaboration leaves very little in terms of artifacts, however it is where most collaboration takes place. The second category is Queued. This type of collaboration is unique in that the artifacts are generally consumed by the recipient. Think email or voice mail, after you have heard a voice mail, you no longer need it. The third category is Long Term. These are artifacts that are needed longer than queued, however they are not static or permanent. The fourth as I have already mentioned is Static or permanent. The difference between the third and the fourth is that the third category has a sense of draft or work in progress where the fourth has a sense of artifact of record.

Now that we have all our attributes on the table. Lets look at the model.

In my next post I will detail out each of the boxes in the model, and start looking at how the model can be used.

Posted in Computers, Work Tagged: Computers, linkedin, Work ]]>http://tschopp.net/2009/08/11/a-model-for-collaboration-tools/feed/0Screen Shot 2013-06-12 at 4.04.09 PMtedtschoppScreen Shot 2013-06-12 at 4.04.09 PMFour is the new Threehttp://tschopp.net/2009/07/17/four-is-the-new-three/
http://tschopp.net/2009/07/17/four-is-the-new-three/#commentsFri, 17 Jul 2009 11:50:58 +0000http://tedtschopp.wordpress.com/2009/07/17/four-is-the-new-three/]]>In the last post I spoke about the three different types of people there are in the world in regards to conversations; the creators, the commenters, and the consumers. I spoke about how each of these groups scale on logarithmic rates of 1, 9, 90. I also mentioned that you will need to fill each of those roles at different times. So what’s next? Lets look at how we move people from one category to another. What are the tools available to us.

I’m going to start out by being honest. I lied to you. There are not three separate categories of people, there are four. This last category is the people who don’t know about your conversation. Lets call them the clueless. These are the people who were not invited to the party. The best way to increase the size of your entire pyramid is to increase the number of people involved. This is the invitation.

However, there is a problem with sending an invitation out to a party if the venue for the party isn’t ready. You will not get that many people to show up to an empty lot, and those that do show up, few will stay. You need a way to turn those clueless people into consumers, and to do this you need something for them to consume. You need content.

This isn’t all you need. You also need a way for those consumers to turn into commenters. Are there any tools associated with your content that allows them to leave comments? Are you inviting them to leave comments? What are the barriers you are putting in a consumers way to make them into commenters?

But this also isn’t all you need. You need a way to turn commenters into creators. What are the tools you are giving people to allow them to create their own conversations? Again, are you inviting them to create their own conversations? What are the barriers, technological or philosophical, are you putting in the way of consumers to create their own conversations?

This also isn’t all you need. If you have all the above you will have a great party, but you will not have all the pieces in place you need for a complete package. You need to put something in place that will allow your content creators to invite their own friends to the party. Ask yourself what barriers are you putting in place that don’t let your content creators to invite others. Are you even helping them, or are you thinking that this is their problem to deal with?

Next time we will talk about the tools in each of these areas and the strategy you can use to create each of these tools for different media types.

Posted in Computers, Work Tagged: Computers, Work ]]>http://tschopp.net/2009/07/17/four-is-the-new-three/feed/1Four is the new ThreetedtschoppFour is the new ThreePutting First Things Firsthttp://tschopp.net/2009/07/09/putting-first-things-first/
http://tschopp.net/2009/07/09/putting-first-things-first/#commentsThu, 09 Jul 2009 17:48:39 +0000http://tedtschopp.wordpress.com/2009/07/09/putting-first-things-first/]]>So you have something to say, and you want others to join in the conversation; perhaps its a blog, or a message board, or a website. How do you get people to participate in this new medium? There are some very simple laws that you must observe to start this process.

The first is that there are three basic types of people. There are people who start conversations. There are people who participate in conversations. Finally there are people who listen to conversations.

Think about the last time you were at a party or with a large group. How many people participated in the organization of the event? Those are your conversation starters. Think about all the websites you have been to. The articles are created by someone. Those are the conversation starters.

Now at this party or family event think about all the people who are standing around in groups some start conversations. “Who saw the game last Saturday?” “Did anyone watch Transformers?” Each of these questions are put out there by the conversation starters. The people responding are in the people who are willing to take part in the conversation, but don’t feel like they can start the conversation.

Finally at this party we have people who hover from group to group to group, listening to what people are saying and taking it all in. These people are your observers. They want to hear what others are saying but, for various reasons, don’t want to participate in the conversation.

Now as I’m sure you are aware of, these roles change. At some point in the evening you move from one category to another taking different roles as the conversation progresses.

So what does this all mean to someone who is running a website? You must first have a place where you can start conversations. You then need a way to have people participate in the conversation, and finally you must have a way for people to just ‘lurk’ watching the conversation take place.

Now lets say you have all these tools. You have a blog which allows you to post. You have a commenting system on that blog. Finally, you don’t have any restrictions on people reading your blog. What next?

Posted in Collaboration, Computers, Enterprise 2.0 Tagged: Collaboration, Computers, Enterprise 2.0 ]]>http://tschopp.net/2009/07/09/putting-first-things-first/feed/0Screen Shot 2013-06-12 at 4.12.47 PMtedtschoppScreen Shot 2013-06-12 at 4.12.47 PMThoughts on Corporate Collaboration Toolshttp://tschopp.net/2009/07/08/thoughts-on-corporate-collaboration-tools/
http://tschopp.net/2009/07/08/thoughts-on-corporate-collaboration-tools/#commentsWed, 08 Jul 2009 19:11:54 +0000http://tedtschopp.wordpress.com/2009/07/08/thoughts-on-corporate-collaboration-tools/]]>The key approach to collaboration tools is to treat them like Pen and Paper. They are like Conference Rooms. They are like the telephones. Each of these tools do not have a whole lot of restrictions placed on them in the office environment. A collaboration tool is only as useful as it is used. To put barriers to use in place only reduces the number of people who are going to use them.

Take any given population of people and you will only have a certain number of people who are willing to participate in a conversation. Out of those people there will be only a small number that are willing to start a conversation. If you put barriers in the way of individuals you will reduce this number.

What is the value proposition associated with collaboration tools? Office workers generate knowledge by taking data and experience; they make a decision, and create an artifact. A successful employee will create an artifact that has a greater value than the initial data plus the cost of paying the employee to transform that data. You can increase the value of this artifact via communication. This additional value proposition is proportional to the number of people in creator’s audience who can consume the artifacts.

With this in mind, you can start to calculate the value of a collaboration tool. Once this is base lined you can then evaluate the individuals involved in this knowledge creation process and evaluate the additional value they provide by transforming data.

An example of this is found in a study from IBM. They were able to show that there is a relationship between the number of individuals in employee’s address book and the amount of revenue they generated for the company. This additional revenue was ~$950 per person annually. So with this in mind, the question is: What are the tools you are using to allow people to grow their network and what tools are you using to allow them collaborate.

Posted in Collaboration, Computers, Enterprise 2.0 Tagged: Collaboration, Computers, Enterprise 2.0 ]]>http://tschopp.net/2009/07/08/thoughts-on-corporate-collaboration-tools/feed/0tedtschoppDehydratedhttp://tschopp.net/2009/06/13/dehydrated/
http://tschopp.net/2009/06/13/dehydrated/#commentsSat, 13 Jun 2009 12:06:54 +0000http://tedtschopp.wordpress.com/2009/06/13/dehydrated/]]>I was asked to put together a short story describing someone in a world not unlike the one presented to us in X-Files or Fringe. This is the first draft after about 60 minutes of work. Perhaps I’ll do more in the future. The story is titled Dehydrated.

I picked up the chart, briefly scanned it; another waste of time. The deputy who had brought this woman into the ward had left as quickly as he could, and from the report they had left it seemed like he wanted to wash his hands of the whole incident. “Walking in Traffic.” “No known address.”

The whole file read like someone trying to pass the buck. I placed the clipboard back on the wall and motioned for my backup to follow me into the padded room.

Sitting in the corner was the thinnest girl I had seen in weeks. She rocked back and forth, black hair obscured her face. The stench of urine had already permeated the room. Janice was going to have to clean this one up and complete a rape kit. Poor Janice, I was going to ruin her day.

“Alice?” The chart had said that was her name.

She reached up with her hand and brushed her hair aside, and peered out from behind the curtains. It was as if she was experiencing sight for the first time. She opened her mouth, but no words came. Yup, no use in it now, get Janice to clean her up and then I could start the tests. Hopefully we would only need to keep her for 72 hours.

The door to my office opened and Janice walked in.

“’Alice’ has been cleaned up and given a gown. It looks like she had a couple bruises on her arms and legs. She also had a garland intertwined in her hair. I had to get the scissors to trim her hair to remove it. The kit proved negative.”

“Thanks Janice. Have George send her in.”

“Sure thing Nathaniel, you know the most interesting thing about that girl. My guess is that she is at least 20 pounds heavier after we washed her up.

The girl that entered looked like someone else. The eyes were no longer wide and grey, they had a ice blue spark to them, and her hair shown. Her cheek bones red with color. If Janice had not warned me, I would not have known.

“Alice, how are you this evening?”

“…”

I stood up and Alice watched me as I walked from behind my desk to sit in a chair opposite her.

“It seems that the shower Janice gave you agreed with you.”

“…”

“OK, well, I’m going to ask you some questions. Please answer to the best of your ability.”

The rest of the 30 minutes went the same way. Alice was there, and she followed me around the room as I moved back behind my desk. However she didn’t say anything. Not a single question was answered. As the interview started to come to a close, I made a note that perhaps I would try again the next morning.

“Alice, I am going to have to say Good bye now. Its been a good half hour, and you haven’t answered any of my questions. So we will being again tomorrow. What do you think about tomorrow?”

“…”

“George, can you come show Alice to her room. She will be staying with us for the evening.”

As George entered, I noticed it. Peeking up from behind her ears, a green garland, the buds of whatever flowering plant had been used to create garland were just forming.

“Alice that’s a lovely garland you have there. Did Janice make it for you?”

“…”

She turned, looked at me, and smiled the most beautiful smile I had ever seen. Our eyes met, and she quickly looked to the ground ashamed.

I got the call a few minutes after 5am. Alice was missing. I raced in. The bars outside her window had been pried open. The police found food prints in the planter under her window; a woman’s, 16 – 18 years old.

The officer who had brought her in said they had found her along the freeway, next to the nursery. She was walking along the access road. No one else was with her. They had already dispatched another patrol car to see if she had returned to that area.

Around Seven, my boss came in.

“Nathaniel, what’s wrong, you look like shit.”

“Stupid animals in the front yard again. Woke me up at three, then I got this call at five. Didn’t even get a chance to take a shower or shave, just came in.”

“Well, It’s just a missing girl. For Christ’s sake, go home and take a shower and shave. I don’t want to see you back before noon.”

I winched. I hated it when he cursed like that.

As I drove home, I kept replaying the events in my mind. Something was unusual about that girl. She had drank up the water, had she been dehydrated? And the garland; now that I think about it, it hadn’t been there when Janice had first brought her in.

I pulled up in front of the house and started to walk through the front yard. I was tired. So tired in fact that I almost missed the new tree growing in my front yard, a shredded hospital gown hanging from the branches.

The red of the flowers, the black branches…

I only found out many years later what Alice went through. But I remember that day like it was this morning. My eyes opened for the first time. I had seen something that wasn’t human and it wasn’t normal. It is growing in my front yard right now. But those eyes, whatever it was it had connected with me. In the end, Alice changed me. I now see the world as a very interesting and unusual place. In my line of work, I see many crazy and unusual things. The only thing that really scares me these days is the quacks and the crazies. The ones who ‘want’ to believe. There is no great conspiracy, no great meaning as these people see it.

But you didn’t come here looking for a lecture on Philosophy or Psychology. You came here to understand that bump in the night. I’m here to tell you that the bump you heard, it’s a little girl just as frightened as you, she trembles when you slam the doors and make loud noises. All she is looking for is for someone to call her beautiful.

Posted in Fiction Tagged: Fiction ]]>http://tschopp.net/2009/06/13/dehydrated/feed/0Screen Shot 2013-06-12 at 4.26.36 PMtedtschoppScreen Shot 2013-06-12 at 4.26.36 PMSwitching from NewGator to Google Readerhttp://tschopp.net/2009/05/27/switching-from-newgator-to-google-reader/
http://tschopp.net/2009/05/27/switching-from-newgator-to-google-reader/#commentsThu, 28 May 2009 05:57:46 +0000http://tedtschopp.wordpress.com/2009/05/27/switching-from-newgator-to-google-reader/]]>Today I made the switch. I moved my Feeddemon sync source from NewGator to Google Reader. The switch was rather easy, but there have been a couple unusual things I had to watch out for. The first one is that you need to have Feeddemon as the place you add feeds. If you add them to Google Reader, they don’t seem to end up in Feeddemon. While this isn’t too much of a problem if you know about it, it was something I verified when I was making the switch. Another thing that would be handy, and I suspect will be the ability to comment on a news item in Feeddemon and have those comments get appended to the article in Google Reader. This I suppose is a lot to as for version one of a feature.

So why go to all this trouble? Well, at work I use Feeddemon, and here at home I have a Macintosh. I can’t stand NetNewsWire, I have never been able to use it the same way that I use Feeddemon. So now I’ll use the Readair on my Macintosh.

Posted in Web ]]>http://tschopp.net/2009/05/27/switching-from-newgator-to-google-reader/feed/0tedtschoppWhat do you think about God?http://tschopp.net/2008/09/02/what-do-you-thi/
http://tschopp.net/2008/09/02/what-do-you-thi/#commentsTue, 02 Sep 2008 18:27:12 +0000http://tedtschopp.wordpress.com/2008/09/02/what-do-you-thi/]]>What do you think about the following statements. Are they true? Do you believe them? What would you add or subtract? How would you change them?

A god exists who created and ordered the world and watches over human life on earth.

God wants people to be good, nice, and fair to each other, as taught in the Bible and by most world religions.

The central goal of life is to be happy and to feel good about oneself.

God does not need to be particularly involved in one’s life except when God is needed to resolve a problem.

Good people go to heaven when they die.

]]>http://tschopp.net/2008/09/02/what-do-you-thi/feed/2tedtschoppThoughts on Narrativehttp://tschopp.net/2008/09/01/thoughts-on-nar/
http://tschopp.net/2008/09/01/thoughts-on-nar/#commentsMon, 01 Sep 2008 19:43:02 +0000http://tedtschopp.wordpress.com/2008/09/01/thoughts-on-nar/]]>I am in the middle of reading a book written by Nassim Nicholas Taleb called the Black Swan. The book itself is basically about the problems with inductive reasoning. In the book he parses these ideas out into several more specific fallacies.

The Narrative fallacy: creating a story post-hoc to create an identifiable cause for a given event.

The Ludic fallacy: believing that the structured randomness found in games resembles the unstructured randomness found in life

The Statistical regress fallacy: believing that the probability of future events is predictable by examining occurrences of past events.

The fallacy I want to concentrate on is the narrative fallacy. What fascinates me the most about this is that religions use Narrative to communicate their ideas. Christianity, the religion I feel is true, even goes to the point of stating that the only way that God communicates to people today is mediated via the Bible, a large collection of stories. When we are told to communicate the Gospel, we are told to tell a story. This story is summed up as follows: The creator of the universe entered reality as a human born of a woman in a small town at the center of the known world. He lived a short life, and then was put to death. Three days later he was alive again. When he was alive he claimed that those be swore fealty to Him as Lord would be able to give Him all the bad things they had done in life and have them killed as he was killed. They would also receive the life he received after being dead for three days.

I guess what fascinates me the most is that Taleb tells us that this narrative fallacy is one of the strongest and easiest fallacies for us to fall into. How is it that one of our weakest points in our intellectual armor is also one of the most critical. The book of Romans calls for us to renew our minds. We are called to be crafty as serpents. So we are called as Christians to be ready for this type of post-hoc fallacy.

I guess we can take this in several different directions. The first is that narrative is the mediated way God communicates, therefore it’s not wholly evil. Another direction is that narrative is definitely screwed up I wonder what it looked like before the fall. I also wonder if this fallacy is becoming more and more common as time passes.

]]>http://tschopp.net/2008/09/01/thoughts-on-nar/feed/0tedtschoppMoving to the Machttp://tschopp.net/2008/04/13/moving-to-the-mac/
http://tschopp.net/2008/04/13/moving-to-the-mac/#commentsMon, 14 Apr 2008 05:54:26 +0000http://tedtschopp.wordpress.com/2008/04/13/moving-to-the-mac/]]>So, it’s been over a month now that I have had my new MacBookPro. I have spent the last month or so getting everything up and running. I have had to purchase a couple products. But right now it seems that everything is where I need it to be.

OfficeI had to purchase Microsoft Office. This is the first time I have ever had to purchase Office. I have a MSDN license, so on Windows, I always used that copy of the application. Office on the Mac is rather nice, and feels like a Microsoft product. Word and Powerpoint have crashed on me several times, and that made me feel like I was back on my PC. At first I hoped to be able to use iWork from Apple, but there really are features in Office that I need. I also had couldn’t purchase the Home version of office, as I wanted to use Automator actions. I’m a bit upset that there are so many different versions of office for the Mac. It seems that Microsoft likes to diversify their product line to the point of loosing focus.

BloggingI have had to do all my blogging in ecto. The application is a good replacement for the blogging tools I have on the PC, but it still isn’t as good as Microsoft’s blogging tool. On the bright side, the application is still being developed and the short coming of the application can be fixed. I have owned it now for about a month and there have been several updates in that month.

RSS/NewsReaderI have been using NetNewsWire as my RSS reader. I like the application, but I miss several of the features that I loved in FeedDemon. On FeedDemon I use to set up the folder view to display all folders that had unread items in them. The view would be set up to display only unread items, and I would scan feed by feed using the control-d to mark the displayed page as read and move to the next unread section. If I came across anything that looked interesting I would flag it and put it in a bucket to turn into another RSS feed, that I run through Feedburner and import into my personalized home page, and onto my Blog. I can’t seem to reproduce this workflow exactly, but I’m getting there.

GraphicsI need to get my license of Creative Suite 3 Professional transfered off my PC and onto this Mac. I have not yet done this.

Development Tools
Well, I purchased this computer to do iPhone development. I will have to say that the customer service I have gotten from Apple vs. the customer experience I got from Microsoft is like day vs. night. I was personally contacted by someone at Apple and they wanted to help me with the process of getting my keys. I had already gotten most of this done, but the personal phone call from someone who sounded like he was calling me from the Bay Area was nice.

As for web development tools, I have tried Coda and BBedit. I have yet to land on a product that I like. I want something that integrates with Subversion or CVS.

Other Cool ToolsiCalendar + SpanningSync +iPhone + iTunes = EPIC WIN! I finally have everything all synced up. On the PC this was almost impossible. I tried to get Vista’s calendar, and Outlook, and some syncing tools and iTunes all to work together. It was frustrating. It was doable outside of firewalls and proxy servers, but once you get behind a proxy server the whole workflow fell apart. This one workflow alone was worth the price of admission. I’m also looking forward to getting OmniFocus and Remember the Milk setup.

BootCampI installed BootCamp to do Vista. I have yet to use Vista, but I can see that I I will after I get the wireless card I have up and running under Vista (btw, getting it up and running on OSX was as simple as downloading the driver and following the instructions on installing it. It just worked.) I will probably use Vista for gaming only. Sadly I’m now thinking that all Vista is good for is games. It’s my new toy operating system.

Overall ImpressionsThe next computer my Mom and Dad get will be an iMac. I’m also going to make my sister get one as well. I’m tired of doing tech support on PC’s. I spent several weeks getting rid of viruses on their machines over the last year. Also it seems that everything Just Works on the Mac. I guess you can say that I drank the Kool Aid and It’s GREAT!

]]>http://tschopp.net/2008/04/13/moving-to-the-mac/feed/0tedtschoppMore on the Switch to my Mac.http://tschopp.net/2008/03/17/more-on-the-switch-to-my-mac/
http://tschopp.net/2008/03/17/more-on-the-switch-to-my-mac/#commentsMon, 17 Mar 2008 07:19:54 +0000http://tedtschopp.wordpress.com/2008/03/17/more-on-the-switch-to-my-mac/]]>Well, I crossed another huge mountain range on my journey to converting everything over to use my new MacBook Pro. I got my Wireless Modem working on the Mac. I also got Boot Camp up and running. The last large barrier to getting this all to work is getting Microsoft Office Installed and running. I am also installing Subversion in the background as I write this. This means I will have a source control system for my iPhone development activities as well as my web development activities. I have also installed BBedit, which integrates with Subversion. Honestly this is getting exciting. I guess I'm still a geek.]]>http://tschopp.net/2008/03/17/more-on-the-switch-to-my-mac/feed/0tedtschoppCommunion of the Saints in the Age of the Internethttp://tschopp.net/2008/03/16/communion-of-th/
http://tschopp.net/2008/03/16/communion-of-th/#commentsMon, 17 Mar 2008 01:39:33 +0000http://tedtschopp.wordpress.com/2008/03/16/communion-of-th/]]>I got the following email from the Pastor who leads our bible study.

During last week’s Life Light I overheard some of you talking about those who feel they do not need the church — the “assembly of believers”. That attitude seems to be increasing in the United States. You can do everything on the “internet” —

Here is my response. I’m posting it here as I would like to post all my rather lengthy and perhaps thoughtful stuff here.

I am sorry for the length of this email. I felt I should respond as I was the one who brought this up. Having the ability to write something without the limitations of paper tends to make me very verbose. I have edited several rather large tangents out of this diatribe against the idea of virtual churches. As with most new things in the Church, I think they only point to the novelty of mans ability to create new ways to sin and the churches (the building, not the bride) willingness to scratch the itch.

My first thoughts on reading the article is the first letter to the Corinthians. Paul says that when they have gathered together and that he Paul is with them in spirit they should hand the man over to Satan who has become proud in his sexual sins. Paul also states that he is with the community of believers in spirit. So we do have an example of the lack of the remission of sins due to some form of confession remotely from the apostolic fathers as recorded in the New Testament. In each case that I can think of, including where the Christ lays outs the Office of the Keys, distance doesn’t seem to be a problem.

However, proximity also seems to be important. Paul asks for the community in Corinth to gather together. Jesus tells us that we can bind and absolve sins here on earth and that he will honor that in heaven.

I guess I will tend to lean away from the idea of a virtual church because online communities tends to get gnostic. I use to run the largest Tolkien community on the Internet. At our height we have 50,000 – 75,000 active participants. From that experience I know a virtual community online can be good. They have many strengths and are the source of much blessing. But there are weaknesses to an online community. They tend to emphasize their strengths. The ability to focus on the mind and being virtually present. This means the group will start to deny the physical in favor of the mind and the virtual. This is the exact same problem that the gnostics championed as one of the blessings of their philosophy.

Being a part of a community is touching, tasting, breathing, crying, and in the end living together. The creator of the universe has blessed us with many amazing blessings including a mind that can come up with things like computers and email and virtual communities online. But that same creator did not enter cyberspace to talk to us. He didn’t send us an email. He didn’t touch the heavens and have the clouds form the letters “I LOVE YOU.” No, he entered reality as a messy, dirty, smelly, Human. The creator liked matter so much that creator and creation became bound up in reality in the person and work of Jesus of Nazareth.

In this cases we should follow the example of our God. How did he communicate our forgiveness to us. When Adam and Eve had sinned, e came to them in the cool of the evening. From that point forward, when God came, it was mediated through the medium of prophets, priests, and kings. Finally when the time was right our God entered reality, and when it was all done he yelled “It is finished” for all to hear. And before He left he charged his followers to tell others what they had witnessed.

No our God entered reality. No more mediation is needed. No more prophets, priests, or kings. No need to approach a mountain on fire, or a building or tent filled with the blood. And now that we are this free isn’t it -so- human to say. “I don’t like my freedom. It’s scary. I need my church experience mediated with a computer screen. I need my experience with my fellow believers mediated by the television screen. I need my experience with God’s forgiveness to be mediated through forms of entertainment like a movie. I believe in the communion of the saints like the creed says, but please, I need that experience mediated; the physical reality of the connection between other believers is too much.” These are all the sayings of a sinful man returning to the same attitudes he had before he experienced God.

I suppose I could keep ranting about this, I agree there are good things about having the ability to remotely confess. Sins are hard to confront. It’s easier to leave a note on a car and say “Sorry I ran into you. Here is my insurance information.” than it is to stop and confront the person you ran into. But the absolution of sins needs to be very real and felt, and seeing the words “I absolve you” scroll across the screen isn’t as real as the confessor/pastor saying it; and it’s definitely not as real as the dying God saying “Today you will be with me in Paradise.”

]]>http://tschopp.net/2008/03/16/communion-of-th/feed/0tedtschoppInternet Explorer 8 and posting to your Typepad Bloghttp://tschopp.net/2008/03/05/internet-explorer-8-and-posting-to-your-typepad-blog/
http://tschopp.net/2008/03/05/internet-explorer-8-and-posting-to-your-typepad-blog/#commentsThu, 06 Mar 2008 07:55:06 +0000http://tedtschopp.wordpress.com/2008/03/05/internet-explorer-8-and-posting-to-your-typepad-blog/]]>I downloaded IE8 today and noticed it had a new way to post to Microsoft’s blog by highlighting some text and sending it off to their blogging service.

And therefore I observe, that the Will (without any metaphysical refining) is, That by which the mind chooses any thing. The faculty of the will, is that power, or principle of mind, by which it is capable of choosing: an act of the will is the same as an act of choosing or choice. – Jonathan Edwards in Freedom of the Will

Did you eat breakfast this morning? How about Lunch? What did you do this weekend? What choices did you make over the long weekend? Did you make any choices or did you just go along with what you have always done?

Right now it’s getting close to 5:00pm and I am hungry. I have a cup of tea I’m sipping, and I have not had solid food in almost 20 hours. Sitting a couple desks down from me is a full spread of sandwiches from Togo’s. Back the other direction is a table with a large jar of smoky roasted almonds, one of my favorite snacks. I know where there is a cache of Milky Ways and a candy jar full of Kisses. I’m sure if I spent some time looking around the office, I would find the conference rooms with food from Baja Fresh, Trendy Thai, Pickup Sticks, or Panera.

But I’m not eating. My stomach is grumbling a bit. But I am choosing not to eat. Every time I walk past a large spread of food here at work I am reminded of my choice. I choose not to eat.

During this Lenten season, I have chosen to fast. I only told an individual or two at work about the fast, but it soon got out to the whole group. They all now know that I was fasting for 40 day (but not 40 nights). One of the questions that has been asked boils down to: “Isn’t it hard to fast, how can you do it?” This question takes many forms, but it has been asked so many times that I think I will formulate a response that reduces my experiences to some general advice about what I have learned.

From the quote above we can see that Jonathan Edwards, in Freedom of the Will, defines the will as the mind choosing. This fast has made me start to question what it means to choose. What is free will. I am now of the opinion that man has a lot of freedom, but many times he choose not to exercise that freedom.

I am free to eat. I gain nothing in heaven or here on earth for not eating. Perhaps I’ll be healthier. Perhaps I’ll learn some lesson about my life. But in the end there is very little ‘value’ in my fast. It is a choice I make freely. The value for me is that I chose it. I chose to act differently.

How many times do we run through life and we don’t choose. We have freedom to eat whatever we want, but we choose to let the smells of McDonald’s fries choose our meal. How many times do we let advertising of a product make a choice for us. Each time I walk past a spread of food here at work, I smell the aroma of those foods. It calls to me. The voice reminds me of other voices I hear; the voices that call to me and tempt me to other things, more horrible things. But every time I choose not to eat the food, I make a choice. This leads me to ask how many times do I truly have my mind choose for me. How many times do I truly use my free will?

I can ask these questions about many areas in my life, but we are adults. Let’s make these questions count. How many times do I actively choose to do good instead of evil. How many times do I choose to be kind, instead of cruel? How many times am I just going with the flow of the culture or the social groups around us? How many times do I do just those things that I have always done? How many times do I actually think about each of my actions? Many of us at this point some will probably say the following:

“Well, I’m not so good at this. I need to work at this. I need to get better at this. I’m glad you brought this up. Now lets see; I’m going to choose to do a better job at choosing things in my lfe. I’m going to be different than all those other people. I need work, but I’m not as bad as those other people. I am no longer going to be a sheep, I’m not going to be like all those other sheep out there. They just follow each other into stupidity and ignorance. They do all sorts of evil and wrong.”

Can you hear that voice in your head? No? Wait until you drive to work tomorrow and you go the same way you have always gone without thinking. Wait until you eat the same thing you ate last week for dinner. Wait until you don’t make a choice and you just go along with the way things always were. You will then be a failure. That is when you will hear the voice. It will say, it’s not so bad, you did so good up until now. You are not as bad as some other people who fail all the time. You choose to do two good things this week. You have gotten one nagging habit under control. Well to that voice I have the following to say.

“Two men went up into the temple to pray, one a Pharisee and the other a tax collector. The Pharisee, standing by himself, prayed thus: ‘God, I thank you that I am not like other men, extortioners, unjust, adulterers, or even like this tax collector. I fast twice a week; I give tithes of all that I get.’ But the tax collector, standing far off, would not even lift up his eyes to heaven, but beat his breast, saying, ‘God, be merciful to me, a sinner!’ I tell you, this man went down to his house justified, rather than the other. For everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, but the one who humbles himself will be exalted.” Jesus as recorded in Luke 18:10–14

What is that voice in your head saying now? How do you respond to that voice?

This parable was recorded as occuring when Jesus was heading down to Jeruselem for the last time. Every step along the way, Jesus chose. He chose as no man before him or since him chose. He chose becuase he knew what was going to happen. He chose, even though he knew the outcome. Here is the point of all this writing. Many times we don’t use our free will. When we do, many times, we choose things we later regret. But someone else has already chosen. He chose to die. In his death he took on all the wrong choices we made and gave us all the right choices.

In this lenten time remeber that you have a choice. Remeber the choices that have already been made.

]]>http://tschopp.net/2008/02/19/more-on-the-fas/feed/0tedtschoppFasting for Lenthttp://tschopp.net/2008/02/13/fasting-for-len/
http://tschopp.net/2008/02/13/fasting-for-len/#commentsWed, 13 Feb 2008 16:15:39 +0000http://tedtschopp.wordpress.com/2008/02/13/fasting-for-len/]]>Well, this is starting the second week of my fast for Lent. This year I have decided not to eat any solid food (liquids only) when the sun is up. What this basically means is that I have a nice normal dinner, and everything else is liquid. I have also decided that I will not be drinking any soda, so all fluids are going to be juices and tea. Most of the time I will drink several types of tea. Occasionally I will have an orange juice or a vitamin water. For lunch I will drink a Jamba juice with a shot of wheat grass.

I have done this fast once before and combined it with a one and a half mile walk because Jamba Juice was that far from work. This year Jamba juice is much further from work, so I will have to go out of my way to do the walking.

So far everything seems to be working great. I will post more later this week about how the process is going.

]]>http://tschopp.net/2008/02/13/fasting-for-len/feed/0tedtschoppIdeas to Think About: Life and Taxeshttp://tschopp.net/2007/09/26/ideas-to-think-about-life-and-taxes/
http://tschopp.net/2007/09/26/ideas-to-think-about-life-and-taxes/#commentsWed, 26 Sep 2007 23:31:50 +0000http://tedtschopp.wordpress.com/2007/09/26/ideas-to-think-about-life-and-taxes/]]>I recently heard Alex Wright speak at the Long Now Foundation via their podcast. It made me think of a couple things.

The talk is worth listening to, as many of their seminars are. Alex left me with a couple ideas I want to look into further.

As a child we all use to play the 20 questions game, and we are all very familiar with the first 3 questions. Is it an Animal? It is an Mineral? Is it a Plant? Then we would proceed to ask 20 questions, each time trying to further narrow down the selection until we were able to say what the person was thinking of. This categorization if formalized is a taxonomy.

The first idea surrounds taxonomy. It turns out that when sociologists and anthropologists look at different societies around the world they break their world into different taxonomies. This isn’t all that weird. The weird part is that universally these taxonomies are only 5 or sometimes 6 levels deep. There really is no good answer as to why this is the case.

There are several guesses. One has to do with the depth of families; you, your children, Your parents, and your grandparents. If you count up the generations, you get 5. If you add you children’s children, then get 6. The idea then goes that this is culturally conditioned into us and the way that we see the world. Eventually those individuals who are predisposed genetically to accept this fact become more successful in reproducing and the “idea” is carried forward via genetics and culture.

That’s an interesting idea, but also controversial even among evolutionary biologists. I think the idea above is interesting, but it is just as scientifically mythological as other anthropological mythologies. As a religious person I would love to have seen Adam apply the first Taxonomy.

Next Ideas to Think About: The House of Memories

]]>http://tschopp.net/2007/09/26/ideas-to-think-about-life-and-taxes/feed/0tedtschoppIdeas of things I need to think about: Garden Statehttp://tschopp.net/2007/09/24/ideas-of-things-i-need-to-think-about-garden-state/
http://tschopp.net/2007/09/24/ideas-of-things-i-need-to-think-about-garden-state/#commentsTue, 25 Sep 2007 01:48:17 +0000http://tedtschopp.wordpress.com/2007/09/24/ideas-of-things-i-need-to-think-about-garden-state/]]>This has nothing to do with New Jersey or emo Jewish twenty somehtings trying to deal with life. This is a blog post that I am making to capture a couple ideas I have bouncing around in my head that need further refinement:

“Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over every living thing that moves on the earth.

“Behold, I have given you every plant yielding seed that is on the face of all the earth, and every tree with seed in its fruit. You shall have them for food. And to every beast of the earth and to every bird of the heavens and to everything that creeps on the earth, everything that has the breath of life, I have given every green plant for food.”

When no bush of the fieldwas yet in the landand no small plant of the field had yet sprung up—for the Lord God had not caused it to rain on the land, and there was no man to work the ground, and a mistwas going up from the land and was watering the whole face of the ground— then the Lord God formed the man of dust from the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living creature. And the Lord God planted a garden in Eden, in the east, and there he put the man whom he had formed. And out of the ground the Lord God made to spring up every tree that is pleasant to the sight and good for food. The tree of life was in the midst of the garden, and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. A river flowed out of Eden to water the garden, and there it divided and became four rivers.

The Lord God took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to work it and keep it.

Ok, the first idea. Adam (The Man) was put into the garden of Eden (not in Eden specifically) to work it and keep it. What is the limit of the garden? We notice that Eden has a limit. There is definitely an inside and an outside. Now looking at the garden. We that God planted the garden in Eden, and that he placed the tree of live in the midst of the garden, as well as the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. But we also notice that the river flowed out of Eden to water the garden. This river divided into four rivers. The important point I’m looking at is the idea of the garden, along with the rivers, flowing out of Eden. Also we see the man was told to work and keep the Garden.

Ok, So what is a garden? It’s a collection of plants. It’s ordered. But as they are plants they fall under the command from God to be fruitful and multiply. So, how far does the garden extend? Lets say it extends 10 miles in every direction from the tree of Life. It seems that’s a reasonable thing to say, as the tree of life was in the midst of the garden.

What happens when, after several years of working (and avoiding the serpent), the Garden grows to ten miles in each direction, is mans job done? No, for a garden to be a garden it has to grow. So what is the limit of the Garden? What if there was never a fall, to what limit should the garden have been extended? What if there was never a curse, and the garden didn’t start to die?; how far had it been extended? How far could it have been extended; to the size of a city? A state? A country? A continent? The whole world? Could the Garden be extended to the Moon? How about to Mars? To the Stars? Where do we want to put up a fence and say this is inside the garden, and that is outside?

Then the angelshowed me the river of the water of life, bright as crystal, flowing from the throne of God and of the Lamb through the middle of the street of the city; also, on either side of the river, the tree of lifewith its twelve kinds of fruit, yielding its fruit each month. The leaves of the tree were for the healing of the nations. No longer will there be anything accursed…

Our final look at the Garden is here. We see a city has sprung up around the tree of life, on either side of the river, and that the fruit from the tree is bearing fruit, and that this fruit is healing and removing the curse.

So, the effects of the fall and it’s curse are only temporary. But my question still stands? What is the limit of the Garden? How far will it extend? Just to the edge of the city which has grown up around the banks? How about to the edge of the state? Will it be only to those of a given country, or just to those individuals of a given race? Will you be the one who plants the first tree on the moon? Are the stars really that far away when you have forever? Perhaps they are in need of a couple gardeners.